Queen's secret technique for predicting Royal Ascot winners revealed

The Queen’s daily carriage procession down the course at Royal Ascot is what makes the race meeting so special, but for Her Majesty, it is also a vital intelligence-gathering exercise as she weighs up her horses’ chances of winning, it has emerged.

As the Queen waves to the crowds in the stands, she is also listening to the sound of the carriage wheels and the horses’ hooves on the track to assess whether the conditions are going to suit her runners.

The Queen with Estimate's first foalCredit:
John Warren

The Queen’s secret was discovered by Juliet Slot, Commercial Director of Royal Ascot, when the racecourse made a series of three films to mark the Queen’s 69-year association with the famous meeting in the year that she celebrates her 90th birthday.

She told The Telegraph: “Every day of the meeting, the royal procession takes a slightly different route up the track to preserve the course, and people say the sound of the procession going past gives a very good indication of the going.

“The Queen has developed such a good ear for it that she can tell as her carriage is coming up the track just what the conditions are going to be.”

The Duke of York presents the Ascot Gold Cup to the Queen after Estimate's win in 2013Credit:
EPA

The first of the films, The Queen’s Horses, includes a rare interview with the Princess Royal, in which she discloses that, as with so much in the Queen’s life, her career as a breeder comes partly down to duty.

She said: “The Queen’s interest in horses, being brought up riding, was always there. At what point that became much more of a method and a discipline on the breeding side I’m not quite sure. I think she also felt that there was a responsibility on her to maintain the bloodlines that has been established over many generations, and something she would have hated to have lost in her time.”

The Queen can tell what the going is like from the sound of her carriage on the trackCredit:
Alan Crowhurst/Getty

Since the then Princess Elizabeth attended her first Royal Ascot in 1947, the meeting has become one of the first fixtures penned into her diary every year and she has attended every day of every year’s meeting since then.

She has had 22 winners at Royal Ascot, only a fraction of the 1,600-plus winners she has had in total, but each has been hard-earned, and each is special because she attends few other race meetings, apart from the Derby at Epsom.

The Queen, pictured with Princess Margaret and her parents Queen Elizabeth and George VI, has been to every Ascot since 1947

Her biggest win at Ascot came in 2013, when she became the first reigning monarch to win the Gold Cup. However, the Princess Royal disclosed that she was so unconvinced that Estimate, the 7/2 favourite in a field of 18 runners, was going to win that she did not even watch the race with the Queen.

She said: “Over the years I’ve adopted a habit of going up to the stewards in the top of the stands… you get a wonderful view of the Gold Cup from up there.

“My children were there at the time, and we all watched and well frankly, we couldn’t believe our eyes because we didn’t realise that this was really very much of a live chance. But it was fantastic viewing, and I know I wasn’t in the box at the time…but I did get down to the winner’s enclosure before Her Majesty so that was nice to be able to be there when Estimate came in.”

Ryan Moore, the jockey who rode Estimate to victory, said: “It doesn’t happen very often but we got to parade Estimate down past the crowds, past the stands, and you know... the Queen’s box is very central above the winning line so it’s easy to pick out, and I remember being able to look up and tilt my hat to her and sort of say thank you. And you know you could see how excited she was.”

Ryan Moore dofs his hat to the Queen after winning the Gold Cup on Estimate

Estimate is now retired and gave birth to her first foal, a bay colt, in February. The Queen’s bloodstock adviser, John Warren, said Her Majesty was “thrilled with him” as “he’s everything you’d hope for a in a first foal”.

The Queen’s Horses, produced by Ascot Racecourse, includes a picture of the Queen petting the foal, taken by Mr Warren.

The Princess Royal said: “You enjoy it because it is a huge feeling of satisfaction when you get it all right and I suspect from Her Majesty’s perspective that’s a lot of emotional investment in those individual horses.

“I would be thrilled if I could maintain that number of winners on a pretty regular basis. And I know there have been periods when there have been many fewer winners in the middle of that history, but I can’t believe that you couldn’t gauge it as being a success in the long run. And, over the decades, that is a very long run.”